Stop Photos from opening automatically on your Mac

Nothing is more annoying that Photos will opens automatically when you connect an iPhone, iPad or other devices to your Mac. Use the following command in Terminal to change this and prevent Photos from opening automatically.

defaults -currentHost write com.apple.ImageCapture disableHotPlug -bool true

Revert to the default setting with the following command

defaults -currentHost delete com.apple.ImageCapture disableHotPlug

4 thoughts on “Stop Photos from opening automatically on your Mac

  1. Or… you could simply uncheck the checkbox “Open Photos for this device” in the Photos import window.

    • That is not true, your method should do this manually for each device. With the above command, you can at one time for all devices and future devices.

  2. This terminal command is effective globally. Unchecking the checkbox “Open Photos for this device” is only available when the device is present. It looks like that setting is stored at the device/memory card, because it does not work anymore if the card is formatted, and you will have to do it over again.
    Do set default in terminal – that works.

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